For all three categories, students were given caselets (for general management and for innovative marketing) and rules for building their idea (for entrepreneurship) in advance and the students emailed their responses to the PaGaLGuY.com team.

Indeed, it was heartening to see the number of responses that the event generated amongst the enthusiastic students of IBA, in spite of the short notice that the students got. The fact that these students were just a week into the courses spoke volumes of how they have structured their thought processes in tackling business issues.

The day started off with the visiting trio giving a brief overview of PaGaLGuY.com to all the MBAs-in-making and how the community has grown over the years. Due to the paucity of time, next on agenda was round 1 of the process where each student that had submitted an entry was to be interviewed by one of the PG team. The team from PG then divided the entrants into three distinct groups based on the categories that the students participated in. The general management category saw the most participation from the IBA students. More than a few enterprising students also took the opportunity to submit their entries just before the start of the round 1 of elimination.

The shortlisted candidates

The team from PG was definitely impressed by some of the entries which clearly gave away the depth of thought and innovation in implementing workarounds to what the students saw as common pain points. The round 1 stretched well into the afternoon and by the time, the interviewing of all students was done, it was well past 2pm. The team from PG then went on to have a lunch at the in-house canteen of IBA. During lunch, the interactions with the IBA students clearly showed how some of the students have their reasons for MBA all right and how they were taking advantage of what IBA had to offer, in terms of opportunities.

Rohit Awasthi and KVJ Subrahmanyam, PaGaLGuY panelists

From round 1, 4-5 students for each category were short listed and were informed prior lunch that they were to get prepared for further questioning on their submission in round 2. To avoid any perceptual bias, it was decided that round 2 will be a group interview of the candidate and his/her submission by all the three members from PG. It was interesting to see how some of the students were clearly meticulous in their planning and preparation in presenting their case to the interviewing panel. At the end of round 2, it was indeed turning out to be the proverbial tough decision in deciding the winners of the scholarship. This was more so the case with the entrepreneurship category where the team from PG felt that two candidates had very good and implementable ideas. After a lot of deliberations, and discussions with PGHQ as well as IBA management, it was finally decided that in the interest of fairness, the award amount be split between the two participants. Finally, at the end of a long day, the four recipients of the PaGaLGuY.com Maverick Manager were decided.

General Management – Prerna Duhan
Innovative Marketing – V Ganesh
Entrepreneurship – Shiv Kumar Pandey and Ganesh Iyer

Scholarship winner Prerna Duhan with PaGaLGuY panelist Kunal Nagar

Ravin K, one of the students interviewed for the scholarship said, “I came to know about the scholarship through Pagalguy. The three people from Pagalguy who came to interview us for the scholarships gave us a great learning experience by making us think on touch and on-depth questions. My business plan was about opening a tiffin business in Ahmedabad on the lines of Mumbai. Despite having spent five months in the hospitality industry, the panelists’ questions showed me that I had overlooked many things in my plan.”

“The Maverick Manager Scholarship was constituted by IBA to identify and nurture talented students. The new entrants were not aware that they would be participating in such a contest even before they had adjusted to their new environment. Hardly a fortnight at IBA, and they were enthusiastic to participate in a contest that was to identify the latent entrepreneurial and managerial abilities in them,” said Mr Rakesh Bhaskar of IBA on the exercise.

“However, at the final round of presentations and interviews, it was evident that the best candidates in each category had been identified. These students were at their competitive best, fighting with their wits yet in a spirit of camaraderie. It was obviously the place to identify the hidden talents in many of these bright youngsters,” he added.

“The presentations were well done – realistic and well thought out. There were strong elements of strategic thinking coupled with a holistic approach. These could be made into viable business propositions with help and guidance. This was indeed a good start to their 2 year program at IBA where they would learn to further hone these innate skills. We wish these motivated and talented students a very bright future, who will do themselves and IBA proud. I am happy to be with the Pagalguy forum and explore more avenues for the students’ cause.” he mused.

The team from PaGaLGuY thoroughly enjoyed the interaction with the aspiring MBA students and took away memorable thoughts with the promise of returning next year with a Maverick Manager Scholarship that is more encompassing in its scope and more rigorous in its selection.